Spaces

Ah!

Let me die doing—

neither dreaming of what may be,

nor remembering;

neither foretelling,

nor recalling

the life lived by a long-ago me.

Oh!

The traumas—

the treacherous paths

negotiated in terror, yet

finished in triumph.

I

honor them.

I honor my efforts—

they formed the now-me.

But I lay them to rest,

those tales of courage

those soft songs of success.

Let others visit them—

through my poetry, perhaps;

or prosy blog of some sort.

But

even this, this very poem—

written today

outdoors, on a picnic bench

somewhere on Hawthorne,

will be history when I close my book.

My

former writings surprise me—

“Did I write that?”

And, bemused,

I try to put myself in that space.

I fail.

With the best of will,

I cannot fit in

those too-small spaces,

let alone be sent there

unwilling

by a cold bureaucracy.

JJH

July 14, 2010

P.S. I’ve put other poems on a page called “Poems by the Broc.” That’s where I’d like to put this one, too, but apparently folks aren’t getting the notices when I post on the other page.